This effort seeks to develop chemical and biological sensing capabilities suitable for use in long duration, distributed sensing applications. For this type of application, it is desirable to provide inexpensive devices that can detect a range of targets, both known and unknown, with minimal power requirements. Porphyrins and metalloporphyrins are intensely colored, aromatic molecules with spectrophotometric characteristics that are sensitive to interaction with other chemicals. Porphyrins offer diverse chemical interactions that can be changed through alterations to the molecular structure and the coordinated metal. Through selection of a group of porphyrin indicators, it is possible to generate an array for which the relative responses of the indicator materials can provide target discrimination. The indicators selected for this effort provide reversible responses to chemical targets, offering the potential for long duration deployments and ongoing or repeated use of the indicator arrays.
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